This paper discusses the discursive dimension of development communication. The inspiration is derived from the author's doctoral dissertation, that had a two-fold interest: to render development communication with a meaning-making role and to derive a theoretical bent to understand issues of power in the policymaking process.

This discursive dimension was illustrated through the results of a discourse study that analyzed the crafting of a landmark law, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA). It aimed to reveal the group constructs that emerged from the meanings assigned by the policy's various stakeholders on the IPRA, determine from these discursive formations privileged or silenced positions and voices, and describe the core of policymaking as a communicative process. To encourage the discourse approach among development communication scholars, I emphasized on the following three inputs of the research: the exploration of the communicative dimension of policymaking; the contribution of the discourse approach to the way development communication should interrogate development; and the methodological potentials of said approach in development communication study.